


War in My Mind

by mintletters16



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, POV Beth, Soft Rio (Good Girls)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 17:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19255504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintletters16/pseuds/mintletters16
Summary: She screams with him sitting shotgun, years of regret and suppressed rage swirling in her chest. It fills up her lungs like smoke from a wildfire before scratching its way up the length of her throat, clambering into her mouth and violently exploding in the space between them.And it just hangs there; proof of the ugly mess of who she pretends she’s not.He meets her anguish with a smirk and a quip about crazy suburban bitches.“That’s it, mami. Let it out.”- Beth mourns a loss and finds comfort in an unlikely source -





	War in My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> One day I will finally write an upbeat Brio fic...today, however, is not that day lol. 
> 
> Title is from Lana Del Rey's 'Ride' and the song Beth puts on later in the fic is Leon Bridges' 'River'. Feel free to play it for some mood setting in that scene, it's a beautiful song. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!!

 

There is a certain comfort in chaos. It’s messy enough and wild enough for Beth to lose herself in, to keep her mind occupied and her hands busy and her planner full – to ground her in the present so she doesn’t completely vanish. There isn’t time to take a breath or contemplate a thought, let alone _feel_.

So she volunteers herself for that bake sale for Kenny’s swim team fundraiser. Asks for 50 more G’s to wash on top of her monthly output. Forgoes Excel and does all of Boland Motors’ bookkeeping by hand.

Because it’s harder when it’s quiet. When the dust settles and her weary bones can rest for a while. When _that_ pocket of her brain bursts open with memories of a life, long past, whose tentacles creep further and further forward until they wind like vines around her whole skull, pressing and pulling her

down

 

down

 

down

somewhere six feet under to waste away with her mother for a restless eternity.

Here lies Wendy Marks, passive wife and absent mother, mind as much a mystery as the hold her soul still has on her eldest daughter.

Dutiful, mature, doting Beth.

Beth, who tried to chase away mommy’s demons with piano recitals and raspberry cream cupcakes, the ones topped with the wafer daisies she’d spent a week trying to perfect.

Beth, who felt her world collapse on a spring morning when one parent walked out the front door never to pass back through it, and the other checked into some unreachable dreamland afterwards - second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.

Beth, who was forced to be a mother before a sister and somehow build a home from the rubble they left behind.

Stop. Reset.

_Just let the past lie._

And she does, for the most part.

But every July brings a specific heat, hits the exact temperature of that day when her black dress stuck to her back and stifled her grief as she breathed above ground while her mother descended beneath it.

She should have known. Actions have consequences. A full clip adds a pound, after all. But wait – she didn’t know that back then.

(Never mind)

July is the familiar sensation of sorrow, mixed with guilt, mixed with longing.

For what never was, for what could never be.

For someone to have squeezed her hand at graduation and told her they were proud. For her wedding to have filled more seats on her side than Dean’s. For her children to have grown up with another nana to spoil them rotten and hide sweets under their pillows when they get in trouble for mama stepping on abandoned Lego pieces again.

For _love_.

Like clockwork, her mind revisits these tired ruins. She walks through the wreckage again and again, always following the same sequence of events.  It’s so unbreakably cyclical, she wants to rip out her hair with her bare hands. Wants to scream until no voice remains or until she implodes, body scattered into pieces, finding a new home beneath the land which drags them under.

So she does. Scream that is.

In the momma van at pick-up time one particularly clawing Tuesday afternoon, while Sally Adams looks on from her Honda, disturbed enough to roll up her windows but not so much she can’t inform the PTA Facebook chat that Beth Boland has officially lost her shit.

She screams with him sitting shotgun, years of regret and suppressed rage swirling in her chest. It fills up her lungs like smoke from a wildfire before scratching its way up the length of her throat, clambering into her mouth and violently exploding in the space between them.

And it just hangs there; proof of the ugly mess of who she pretends she’s not.

He meets her anguish with a smirk and a quip about crazy suburban bitches.

“That’s it, mami. Let it out.”

The memory of a soft squeeze of her shoulder as she gasps in the aftermath lingers long after he leaves for his own car. His touch is a paradox, she thinks – helping to control the frenetic rampage of her heart despite often being the very thing to induce its wild beating.  

*

Something about this July feels worse, though. There’s an extra weight on her chest that pushes down harder, leaving deeper impressions on her bones than it has done in previous years. Ruby’s concerned gaze lasts a little longer and Annie calls her cell more often at night.

The only one who’s not different is him. He taps away on his phone as she sits on the park swing drawing a spiral in the dirt with the tip of her Mary Janes while his boys count the cash. Business as usual. His gift to her.

She’s grateful.

He passes her the next load of funny money, calloused hands covering hers as they do, mouth leaning close to breathe a good night in her ear. The whisper washes through her, revitalises her senses for a second as a flash of life shocks up her spine.

He’s good at that. Waking her up.

She lets out a breathless laugh as he retreats, thankful for the brief break he provides from the nothingness.

“No funny business this time, ladies, or you’ll force me to be three bullets down,” he throws over his shoulder. Her head shakes and eyes roll – they’re _way_ past that now - but when she looks back at her girls, she starts in surprise.

Annie whimpers, trembling hand rising to cover her mouth as the blue of her eyes look upwards, wet and impossibly wide. Ruby’s face is stricken with a heartache and bewilderment that makes Beth’s gut twist anxiously.

“Don’t worry, he’s just messing with us,” she shrugs, trying to placate them with her brightest voice.

It’s odd, she thinks, when they only look more confused.

*

On the days when Beth feels particularly devastated, when her heart feels so heavy she fears it might drop out of her body, she kneels three inches deep in dirt and digs out the weeds infesting her back yard.

Her straw hat does next to nothing to shield her pale skin from burning in the scorching sun’s rays and the sweat dripping from her body is slick and gross, but these things are reminders that she is still here. That despite the numbing sensation her panic attacks leave in their wake, she is still real and tangible and won’t evaporate into blankness anytime soon.

Of course, that’s how he finds her – a sweaty, overworked, emotional mess.

“Damn, what those plants ever do to you?”

“They’re weeds. They aren’t supposed to be here.”

She looks up to see him standing above her, black t-shirt fitting him snugly as he assesses the scene before him. A sharp request to tell him to _mind your  own business please, I’m not in the mood today_ jumps on the tip of her tongue but his body is blocking the heat, casting her in cool shade, so she holds back on the comment, letting it fizzle out in her mouth.

“You know, with what I’m paying you, you could just hire a gardener. Ain’t that who you basic bitches are s’posed to be fuckin’ while your man’s at work anyway?”

His voice is as lewd as his words, and impossibly her face flushes even redder as he slowly sinks down to face her only three peonies away. He bites his bottom lip as his eyes languidly dip down to her breasts and soil splattered chest, then back past her frown to meet her eyes again.

“I mean…seems like you don’t mind gettin’ down and dirty when you want.”

“Must you always lower the tone?”

She shoves his hard chest with her gloved hand as he chuckles deep and loud, the sound settling at the pit of her stomach in a way that strangely makes her feel sick with loss even though he’s right there beside her.

She jumps, spade clattering to the ground, when she sees blood dripping from his mouth, still open in a laugh, teeth glinting like red stained knives in the sun. But then she blinks and just as quickly as it appeared, it’s gone.

_I need to get out of this heat._

“Is there a reason you’re here or do you just take pleasure in bothering me unnecessarily?”

He squints at her, lips pursed slightly in contemplation or amusement, she can never tell. It’s like he’s always trying to piece together a mystery novel when he looks at her, or maybe he’s already read every page and finds it funny he knows her better than herself. Either way, his smugness prickles at her skin unpleasantly, the feeling multiplying exponentially at his next words.

“Nah, I just came over to see if you’ve snapped out of it yet.”

“Snapped out of what?”

“ _This,_ ” he gestures to all of her. “You been draggin’ your sorry ass around to every drop for the last three weeks, head halfway in the clouds. You gotta stay sharp if you wanna keep up business.”

“Figures. So you’re saying rather than being concerned about my wellbeing, you’re worried about your assets.”

“I’m sayin' I’m gettin’ sick and tired of havin’ to remind your bitch ass once again to get your head straight.”

“My head is just fine, thank you for your concern. Look, I’ve been distracted a little but we’re still washing at a good enough rate. Relax.”

Her syllables come out like spikes, agitation increasing as she can feel it overwhelming her again, that heavy cloud settling atop her mind. She goes to dig the next patch of weeds when his hand grasps her wrist, tight and angry.

“I’ll relax when you stop treatin’ this like some fuckin’ hobby. You don’t get to switch off, not when my money’s on the line.”

She yanks her wrist back and stands up abruptly, the vertigo sending a queasy wave through her.

“I know this isn’t a hobby, _this is my life!_ It’s the only thing keeping me sane, keeping me from throwing everything to shit and just leaving this whole goddamn planet!”

She’s aware she’s screaming at him now, face blotching with frustration and rage, and suddenly he’s right there in front of her again and she’s about to rip her own voice box out because she can’t get the words out to tell him.

To tell him how she’s suffocating, how, like always, he’s _too close_ , asking too much but giving too little for her to be able to explain why her cranium feels like it’s been sawed in twenty and her nerves are so wired she might electrocute him if he comes any nearer.

He’s like molten liquid; dangerous and dynamic, always managing to completely fill any space he’s in – her car, her house, her mind – filling it up until he’s all she sees. She needs to get away but he’s still here, looking at her like she’s some rare endangered specimen he doesn’t know whether to be disgusted or fascinated with.

“Look, I don’t care if you – “

 “Just shut up! Don’t tell me what to do, or when to snap out of shit! God, you’re like a leech, always sucking the life from me and never letting me rest. Can’t you just leave me alone for a second or won’t you be satisfied until I’m dead too?!”

She can’t breathe, can’t move, can only scream at him until her voice gives out, can barely see him through her tears and blinding _fury_ coursing through her bloodstream.

He doesn’t even blink and his coldness shames her.

“Call me when you calm down, yeah? Ain’t got no time for you makin’ a scene.” He kisses his teeth in a dismissal that makes her feel about two inches small.

And honestly who is he to tell her how to behave? He doesn’t know, will never understand. He builds her up in an image he likes just to knock her right back down when she doesn’t meet his expectations and she’s _so sick_ of men telling her how to feel.

She throws her muddy spade at his already retreating back and tells him to get the fuck out of her sight.

Weeds forgotten for another day, straw hat fallen somewhere in the dirt, Beth walks back inside, past a distressed Dean cradling Jane’s face in his neck as if to hide her from her monster of a mother.

“ _Beth_ …”

“Don’t start. It was just business.”

She leaves for her bedroom before she hears Jane asking Dean who mommy was talking to out there. He can only try to swallow down his horror in response.

*

A cool summer night’s breeze dances in through her open window and cocoons her as she moves around her kitchen to her old stereo, choosing a record to play as she unwinds the tension of the day.

_Been travelling these wide roads_

_For so long_

_My heart's been far from you_

_Ten thousand miles gone_

The comforting sound of the opening chords caress her senses as she reaches up for the bourbon bottle above her sink that she’s been gasping for all evening. She’d washed away the heat and dirt from earlier before tucking the kids in, Danny’s soft, sleepy, dark eyes suddenly reminding her of another little boy. One with gap teeth who likes monkey bars and baseball and whose face inexplicably sends an ache through her chest, even now.

It makes her think of his father; that infuriating, magnetic man she both resists and craves. He was just so dismissive of her earlier, as if she was stupid to still hover over something she should have put to rest long ago.

And the thing is, she wants to. To find release from the past and move into the light, to be absolved of her crimes of not doing enough when it mattered and to cut her memory’s cords currently keeping her away from salvation.

Freedom. She wants it but it keeps slipping away.

The sound of glass being set on the counter beside her shakes her from her musings as she turns to see him here again, pouring himself a drink, regarding her with softer eyes than he’d left her with before.

Maybe it’s the backdrop of the sparkling night sky, or maybe it’s the subtle, sweet affection she sees smoothing over his face, but something in that moment makes her think he looks so beautiful she might break if he walks away again.

Instead, he comes closer, fingers brushing back her hair and trailing down her face with such reverence it makes her breath hitch in surprise.  

_Oh, I wanna come near and give_

_Every part of me_

_But there's blood on my hands_

_And my lips are unclean_

Gentle hands come to rest on her hips, slowly turning her to face the night sky as strong, sure arms hold her back close against him. They sway to the music at a pace that slows her thoughts as her hands are enveloped in his at her stomach, the warmth from them reminding her of pink mittens she’d knitted for Annie one winter when their mother was too far gone to do it herself.

There she goes again, mind falling down the rabbit hole, leaving her body in a house full of children and love she’s not sure she ever really deserved. If she opens the window in front of her at bit wider, she thinks she might actually float away. Just leave them all and stay caught up in the stratosphere, perpetually stranded but at least somewhere else. Somewhere infinite.

“You ready to come back down to me now, ma?” The question is spoken softly into the side of her hair where his face is buried, eyes closed as he breathes her in. She doesn’t know why his words cause tears to spring into her eyes, different to the ones he’d caused earlier. This time she’s moved, blindsided by his tenderness.  

“I’m trying.” It’s all she can whisper in return.

He hums a sound of acceptance, and drops a feather-light kiss on the side of her neck. He keeps his lips there, nose nuzzling her ear as they sway together.

_Take me to your river_

_I wanna go_

_Oh, go, take me to your river_

_I wanna know_

He’s all she can feel, and it’s the closest she thinks she’ll ever feel to serenity. His arms are like a fortress around her, and she knows she’s found a sanctuary in them as she turns to face him, eyes finding peace in his.

His hands tug her towards her bedroom, the fading sounds of the last few chords disappearing in the air behind them.

There’s a haze that descends around them as he helps her into bed, and her head feels heavy as it hits the pillow beneath it. Her arms are around his neck keeping him in place and she’s fighting to keep her eyes open but for some reason she feels she can’t miss even a second of him right now.

His forehead rests against hers as she loses the battle and drifts away, wrapped up in his soothing scent. She just about catches a, “Sweet dreams, Elizabeth”, before entering a dreamless realm completely.

*

The morning light nudges against her eyelids as Beth slowly seeps back into semi-consciousness a few hours later. She can hear familiar voices talking over her, but can’t find the strength to open her eyes and greet their owners.

“It’s gone too far, Annie. When I walked in she was passed out on the kitchen island, half the bourbon spilled out on the floor. I barely dragged her in here in time before Jane came down.”

Beth can’t comprehend the words but she hears Ruby’s voice shaking, syllables rising in pitch the longer she speaks.

“What do we do? She’s completely lost it! It’s just like mom all over again! I mean, talking to invisible people, laughing at thin air, fighting with ghosts in her back yard?! She’s somewhere I can’t reach her anymore!”

She can distantly hear Annie crying through her words, the sound tearing at her chest even in this misty state. But all she can really focus on is one sentence.

_I can’t reach her anymore._

It takes her back to being eleven, trying to shake her mother awake but feeling her slip through her fingers no matter how hard she tries.

And then she’s right in front of her again, running towards a star – second to the right – beckoning Beth to follow.

 “You know who she keeps imagining though, don’t you?”

“Don’t say his fucking name, Ruby.”

“What if she love– “

“He’s gone! She made sure of that! Three times over!”

Beth hears a deep laugh somewhere beside her mother and it’s him, dark and strong and _real_. She reaches out a hand to touch him, and she’s smiling wide when he takes it, flying them somewhere infinite.

Ruby chokes back a broken sound. “She’s haunted.”


End file.
